Where do our new models of housing come from? Multiple residential housing, with its limited typology, tends to be constrained by regulation, economy and delivery method, which is typically developer-led and yield-driven. Innovation does occur within these constraints, but conventional methods of delivery have limited capacity to provide the diversity and quality of medium-density housing needed to meet infill targets, regenerate our suburbs and encourage community acceptance. A project currently being developed in White Gum Valley, Perth, Western Australia, designed by architectural practice Spaceagency, shifts accepted logic about how we could, should or want to live together and, in doing so, creates a new model for medium-density housing with an altered economic, social and spatial logic.
Adopting the Baugruppen delivery process, a design-driven, ownership-based model developed successfully in Germany, this…